Dissolving Tears
by NajikaSun
Summary: Going a bit further into Clive's awful past then the game showed.  Very dramatic and angsty.


Dissolving Tears

-A short story in the writing style of _The Scarlet Letter_-

I didn't even know what had happened.

It was so short a time…I didn't think that such a tragedy could happen to me – Fate always had a way of sneaking up on its unsuspecting victims – I simply didn't realize that I, of all people on this earth, would suddenly be the one to suffer.

I was sitting in my eastward-facing bedroom; quite content with the morning sunrise shimmering through the glass panels, brushing warmly over my face and cheeks, glowing through my eyelids that were constantly trying to blink away lingering sleep. Eventually, my growling stomach convinced my eight-year-old body out of the sun-soaked blankets and into my favorite clothes – a white collared shirt, a blue tie and jacket, red shorts, blue socks and black shoes, and my blue hat that I was never seen without. With a stretch and a yawn, my sight, after much time, came into focus; my eyes whipped over to the window, showing my parents' college: Gressenheller University. I caught a quick glance of the two walking together; fingers laced, both their other arms carrying a stack of papers and a briefcase – things no college student, or teacher, in this case, there would be seen without. I smiled briefly, and then stuck my tongue out playfully at the couple; shortly after, I ran downstairs – stumbling slightly on the last step – to find my daily note sitting on the kitchen table.

"_My Dear Clive:_

_ I apologize that your father and I cannot stay home with you on your vacation day, we simply must continue with our progress in the college labs. I promise that we will take you out somewhere fun on our next day off. This morning, your father woke up early and made pancakes for breakfast…_"

By this time, I had dashed off to warm several pancakes for myself; by the time I had prepared my breakfast, I nearly forgot about the note that had told me that – I finished reading it promptly afterwards.

"_…So I left some in the refrigerator for you; I hope you find them as tasty as your father claimed they were; you know how he is._

_ We both love you very much. Have a wonderful day, my dearest son. Stay safe; see you tonight._

_ With all my heart,_

_ Mum._"

A smile crept across my face as I read the small note – in the handwriting that looked so much like her voice; calm, soothing, motherly – and I continued to eat my delicious breakfast; later placing the plate and silverware into the sink and walking towards the front door to explore around outside. There was a very slight fog in the cool morning air – there wasn't a cloud in the sky, despite the fog; this was London, there was always mist in the early hours – it was quite refreshing on my face; it delightfully tickled my nose, causing me to sneeze an odd-sounding squeak and lose my balance, a smile dancing across my reddened face.

Suddenly, the surrounding air felt quite different; all the cool mist surrounding me had quickly become quite a bit warmer than before – steam, one might say – and the fragile skin around my ears and nose was starting to sting, as if red-hot needles were piercing around the cartilage. Confused, I slowly got up off the grass, ignoring the slight pain around my face, only to feel tiny shockwaves ricocheting off the front door frame and gliding through the ground under my feet. As worried and perplexed as I was, I felt that I needed to find the cause of these strange tremors and rapid temperature changes – being 10 years younger than I am today, I was more alert to these types of disturbances.

But before I could even think to peer around the edge of my abode, much to my horror, a behemoth of a shockwave crept slowly towards my trembling body. The stripe of pure distortion slithered towards me with unnatural lethargy; I could see each nanosecond frame by frame as if this life of mine was a simple animation of God and, for what seemed like many hours, the stripe simply froze in front of my face and stared at me, intimidated me, blinded me. The seconds were hours and the minutes were weeks; the electrical pulses of my mind and nerves were stopped, my heart was loud as an old grandfather clock pounding against small eardrums. Finally, after this horribly elongated madness, the shockwave hit my body, sending me flying backwards more than a few feet, and landing on my back on the cement sidewalk bordering the narrow street, knocking the breath out of my lungs!

There was smoke and fire in every square foot of the university's laboratories, as well as nearly three-quarters of my own house; loud noises were ringing in my ears and banging upon my temples, the air was becoming darker and less breathable with every minute that passed, there were flashing lights that lit up the entire area in a split second and then faded just as rapidly. Explosions were heard from every direction, it seemed, and the conflagration continued to violently burn; immediately after landing from my fall, I ran back as fast as I could muster – away from the smoldering ruins that I had been, quite recently, sleeping in – but eventually, my footing was lost and I tumbled down, head over heels, through the multiple lawns of surrounding houses. The pain pulsing through my body was incredible; I could do little more than curl up in the grass, covering my ears with my large hands and tightly clenching shut my eyes.

"_Oh, please, God, let this wretched pain end soon!_"

When I finally came back to my senses and decided to lift up my head again, I stood up – slowly, for my knees and elbows were injured and dripping blood – and all I saw were ruins. There were no more laboratories; the entire set of buildings had collapsed into a pile of dusty rubble and smoke, as well as a handful of stray flames, that looked almost no different than my own house did at that horrible moment. For a few heart-wrenching minutes, I simply stood there and stared at the horrible truth; I did not completely understand what was going on, for my mind could not yet comprehend the intensity of this situation – I was in a state of shock. There was complete silence at this point; I expected there to be an altercation of screams, cries, and panic, but for the moment, there was none; and all I could do was stand there with wide and unfocused eyes, staring out at my destroyed home and the leveled university labs.

There was a very slight and silent breeze after the smoke had somewhat thinned out; it carried much dust and ash that intermingled with my hair – my hat had flown off due to the initial blast. I very slowly bent down – the grass crackling under my unsteady feet – and picked up my hat; I could hear my fingers stretching the cotton fibers in the lining of the blue-striped pageboy cap as I gingerly replaced it onto my head. Upon second glance, I realized that there was something stuck in the tall grass – it was a small and scorched piece of paper – I picked it up and unfolded it carefully, and, though there were only a few legible words written upon it, I immediately recognized the now-painful message.

"_We both love you very much. Have a wonderful day, my dearest son. Stay safe; see you tonight._

_ With all my heart,_

_ Mum._"

When I looked up from the note – my face showing a devastated expression – the only thing that was moving in my line of sight was a grey-haired man in a lab coat, screaming a woman's name over and over again, "_Claire! Claire!_" He ran over to a particular pile of smoking rubble, details of which I could not make out, and continued to shout the name, getting slowly quieter with each pained shout until I could no longer even hear his ragged voice. The remaining fires were increasing in their blazes; multiple people had begun to frantically escape from the college campus at this point. I saw many people whom I recognized from looking out the window each morning, all of them running away in a panic and taking shelter in their cars or in their houses, but I never saw the two people who I wanted –nay, needed – to see at that moment in time.

It finally hit me at that moment that my parents were not going to escape from the burning college laboratories. They _were not_ going to escape, they _did not_ escape the explosions, they _never would_ escape; they were trapped in that same rubble I had been staring at this entire time – the span of which was, sadly, only a few minutes – and I was now alone in the world without that guiding hand that every child needs in order to function properly. I gasped, choking slightly on the ashes in the air, and screamed.

"MUM! DAD!"

I ran faster than I knew I could – my feet barely grazed over the ground; one of my hands was plastered upon my head to avoid losing my hat again. The grass below my feet was uprooted and sprawled out across the cement; tiny puffs of dust were kicked up on the sidewalks; the air was rapidly becoming hotter and hotter as I approached the catastrophic site – yet, I still ran towards the burning building. I was crying out the names of my parents in every way I could think of; tumbling, flying, tripping, skidding, losing control of my legs as they sprinted on and on and on; they would not stop. I would not stop – despite my burning lungs and throat like sandpaper, I would get in there – for once I was inside that building, I could be together with mum and dad again. They were in there…they had to be…

But that one man…would not let me.

A strong hand had clutched tightly onto my shoulder with such surprising force that my entire body's momentum was screeched to a sudden halt – my feet flew off the ground; my other shoulder was also grasped in this momentary pause. I struggled to get away, to free myself to run towards the burning couple once again, but the icon grip on the hands would not cease.

"No! I have to go back! My parents are still inside!" I screamed, punching at the person who stopped me and flailing around violently as a feeble attempt to break away and leave – it was to no avail.

"Pull yourself together, boy!"

The man finally spoke – his voice was harsh and demanding and worried; and yet, it was also somewhat soothing to my ears. I did not care at the moment, however, for I was too busy screaming and throwing punches at this man – shortly after he spoke, his open palm collided with my face, making me wince from the stinging of the impact, his hand immediately finding itself back upon my shoulder afterwards.

"There's nothing to be done! Jump in there and you'll die too!"

After the man shouted this, my punches slowly ceased to light, trembling taps upon the man's chest; my eyes were beginning to well up with shimmering memories of even just yesterday – I never would have thought that I would lose the people most important to me this early in my childhood. My fists unclenched completely for a few moments before they grasped onto the man's jacket; my mind was reeling through my existence like a lost movie film strip – flickering still scenes in black and white, the little details around the edges blurring out – and I thought once more of the note.

They promised me they would see me tonight.

"They broke their promise to me…" I whispered, more or less to myself; the man must have heard my shaken voice – either that, or he felt my spasms at this point – and, in an unexpected act of altruism, he moved in front of me and gently pulled my head to his chest in a "fatherly" embrace. My grip on his shirt tightened as my eyes opened wider then I knew they could – I had no idea who this man was, but it felt as if I had known him for years at that moment – and I emotionally collapsed in his arms.

"No…! No, no!" I cried, tears streaming down my face and dissolving on the hot concrete; I was openly sobbing in this foreign man's arms, screaming and choking and gasping for breath in what is still the darkest moment of my life to this day. The man's grasp shifted – one hand was draped across my lower back, while the other was behind my head and gently stroking my dirty hair; and if it weren't for my wailing, I would have felt the man slightly trembling himself and heard his very light, nearly unnoticeable sobs. Yes, this man cried along with me as we simply stood together in the middle on the street, watching the ashes and ruins blow away in the zephyr, along with the souls of the 10 victims of that tragic accident.


End file.
